single_thought (4X4, 400 dpi):
"Snapshot" of a brain as it thinks a single thought in the course of learning a new task. Subjects were presented with a series of dot patterns and learned through trial and error whether the patterns belonged in category 1 or 2. The colored portions indicate areas of increased neuronal activity: in the frontal eye fields, which control eye movement, the supplementary eye fields, the part of the brain that "plans" the movement of the eyes, and the interparietal sulcus, the region responsible for visuo-spatial processing. The scan captures the moment when the brain "understands" what it is seeing. Brain scans were done on a 3.0-tesla MRI machine made by GE Healthcare.

Note: Other researchers have produced brain scans of thought processes, but theses were all averages of multiple scans completed over a period of time, blurring spatial and temporal details critical to a scientific understanding of how the brain functions.

finger_Mansfield (4X6, 400 dpi):MRI scan of a finger, published by Nobel laureate Peter Mansfield in the British Journal of Radiology in 1977, when the technology was first developed.